“Water from Hill to Hill”

Recalling the Paint Creek Flood of 1932

By Matthew Mitchell

A devastating flash flood along Paint Creek in southern
Kanawha County on July 11, 1932, caused widespread damage and at least
18 deaths. Here, cars are forced off the road at the Paint Creek Coal
company store in Standard, the day after the disaster. Photograph courtesy
of the West Virginia State Archives.

Paint Creek is a long, winding tributary of the Kanawha River. Starting
in Raleigh County, the clayish-colored waters for which many believe the
creek is named flow nearly 100 miles, passing through Fayette County,
running south through Kanawha County, until finally joining the Kanawha
River at the small town of Pratt.

Though many coal companies mined the mountainsides and large coal communities
lined its banks, the people living along Paint Creek were experiencing
hard times in 1932. Roland “Joe” Savilla was 16 years old
and a resident of Livingston, a town four miles from Pratt. Now a resident
of St. Albans, Joe recalls that Paint Creek was “beginning to feel
the full impact of the Depression,” at that time. The coal community
of Livingston was losing more and more miners. Their houses were barren,
waiting for better times, he says.

James “Jeep” Hall of Gallagher was 10 years old and was
a friend of Joe Savilla’s brother Sammy. As Jeep remembers, “Times
was hard. If we had a couple ole biscuits with potted meat or something
on ‘em to take to school, that was something. [Sammy] used to bring
me a peanut butter and banana sandwich all the time.”

Paint Creek had already experienced its share of tough times. In 1912,
it was the site of a pivotal chapter in the infamous West Virginia Mine
Wars. [See “Three Sides to the Story: Governor Hatfield and the
Mine Wars,” by Joseph Platania; Summer 1985.] According to historical
accounts, coal operators, refusing to recognize the union, hired armed
guards to evict protesting miners from company homes. Joe Savilla’s
mother witnessed firsthand the cruelty of these guards. “Mother
was seven months pregnant back in the strike of 1912,” he says.
“One of the guards came to our house and asked Mother where my father
was. She said he had gone to Ohio to look for work there in the coal mines
of Ohio. Well, they didn’t like that answer, and one of the guards
clenched his fist and hit her in the stomach. She had to go to the hospital
prematurely to give stillbirth to a boy.”

Twenty years later, men and women at Paint Creek still carried the unpleasant
memories of a labor war, which, according to accounts, left 13 miners
and mine guards dead.

But on July 11, 1932, more hard times were in store. That day, a cloudburst
poured vehemently from the sky, and the townspeople were forced to take
shelter. Joe Savilla recalls, “It was towards evening, and the sky
really had what we call a threatening look. It was dark, [there was] some
wind and thunder. It really had the atmosphere of [impending] danger.
It really did.”

Ann Adkins, now of Gallagher, was six years old and living in Livingston.
As she remembers, “That night it just rained, rained, rained. It
was just a cloudburst, is what it was, I guess, at the head of the holler.
I remember all of us kids laying across the bed — we lay crossways
in the bed, five kids and Mom. We watched the lightning, and it kept the
sky just bright. Oh, it was just lightning awful.”

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